Cedar Rapids shuts down nuisance apartment house

CEDAR RAPIDS - Enough.

City officials on Thursday shut down what they said is a'nuisance” apartment house in the city even as the owner sold the place to a new owner.

Amanda Grieder, coordinator of the city's SAFE-CR nuisance property abatement program, on Thursday said the city's Building Services Division placarded the property at 110 16th St. NE because of 'unsanitary conditions,” which she said included infestations of bedbugs and cockroaches, and because of fire code violations.

The placard informed tenants in the building's 14 efficiency apartments and one sleeping room that they could no longer occupy the building.

Grieder said the apartment building's owner, Keith Nemecek, had been scheduled to appear in front of the city's Housing Board of Appeals at 1 p.m. Wednesday to appeal a 30-day notice that precedes placing a placard on a building and calling it uninhabitable.

Instead, the owner sold the building at 9 a.m. Wednesday to Clint Price, Grieder said.

Price, she said, appeared at the hearing and asked the city to put the placard in place and shut the apartment house down because of the property's health issues.

Grieder said Price now plans to evaluate the place's problems and fix them so tenants can live there again.

Grieder said the building at 110 16th St. NE also had amassed $1,445 in fines because of nine police nuisance calls to the property this year. After a certain number of police calls and/or violations of building codes, a property can be labeled a nuisance, and this property obtained that status, she said.

She said the program is designed to get landlords to remedy problems.

Neighboring residents and businesses had complained to SAFE-CR about the property, she said.